“Very good.” Daniel sipped his beer in thought before he finally said, “She had a bad relationship in Honolulu. Still getting over it. We’re going to take it slow and get to know each other again.”

“That’s part of the fun, yeah,” Koji said. “Just don’t mess it up this time.”

“I’ll try not to,” he said, and laughed.

“I hear you’re also taking good care of Mama Natua,” he said. “How she doing?”

Daniel sat back in his chair. “Other than her senility, her health appears stable. She still needs to take a few tests to see how everything else is faring.”

Koji sighed. “Fancy name for old age, yeah?”

“Afraid so,” he said. “We will all walk down that road one day; some of us just lose more along the way.”

“No need to tell me.” Koji swallowed a mouthful of beer.

“Mama doesn’t remember much of what’s happening in the present. Her memories of people and events are from the past, but they’ve also become confused, mixed up. Time takes on a life of its own.” Daniel paused and took another swig of beer. “Actually, it’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why is that?”

“While I was examining her, Mama mistook me for my father. She talked about seeing you and him together,” Daniel said, his eyes on Koji. “It sounded like she might have seen you and my father after he’d left us.” He smiled. “I’m not sure if it’s just another one of her confused memories, but I’ve wanted to ask you about it ever since. Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” He paused to take another drink from his bottle. “Did my father ever return to Hilo after he left us?”

Koji breathed in slowly, sat back, and ran his hand over his head. He heard a scratching on the screen door and knew it was Hula, the feral cat who always came by in the late afternoon for dinner. “Just a minute,” Koji said. He stood to let the cat in, watching her dart straight for the kitchen. Some things were simple: all Hula wanted was to be fed and she was happy. Koji returned to the conversation he’d been holding at arm’s length.

“So, Mama said that?” Koji said, sitting back down. He drank some beer. It’s time, he heard Mariko telling him. “She thought you were Franklin, eh?”

Daniel nodded. “I guess the resemblance between us brought up something she remembered from the past. She also could have been confusing an event that happened when you were young.”

Daniel had always been methodical, weighing one thing against the other. Koji put down his bottle of beer and picked up his glass of whiskey before leaning forward. “She wasn’t confused,” he said.